Friday, July 24, 2015

You know
that old wheeze about as soon as a person comes into of a lot of money it
changes them? I subscribe to a different theory. I think that acquiring a lot
of money just makes you more of what you already are. If you were a generous,
giving person before you became rich, chances are you’ll do more charity work
with that money and help to make somebody’s world a little bit brighter. If you
were an asshole before you became rich then the odds are that now that you have
an AmEx Centurian card, you’re a raging asshole.

What has
all this got to do with Mark Bosuquet’s superhero novel; USED TO BE: THE KIDRAPSCALLION
STORY? Because most of the characters in his novel follow this principal, I
think. Their superpowers just make them more of what they already are. Take our
POV character, Jason Kitmore aka Kid Rapscallion. Orphaned at an early age and
adopted by the superhero Rapscallion to be his sidekick he’s sexually abused
(and not by whom you’re thinking of either) He takes designer drugs to enhance
his physical abilities and be a proper superhero. Is it any wonder as an adult,
out on his own and no longer just a sidekick he becomes hooked on cocaine and
kinky sex? As I got deeper into the novel and more of Jason’s personality was
explored and revealed I realized what Mark was doing. In the hands of a lesser
writer he would have let Jason off the hook and skewed us into feeling sorry
for Jason, leading us to think that Jason never had a chance in life. But I don’t
think that such is the case. I think that Jason Kitmore would have been a
mightily screwed up individual without the sexual abuse, the drugs or the
superpowers. Such is the strength of the voice of that character.

And that is
what pulled me through USED TO BE: THE
KID RAPSCALLION STORY. The voices of the characters who are all so strong
and so individual that I was actually hearing them in my head (that doesn’t
happen nearly as much as it should when I’m reading a book these days) with
their own inflections and distinctive speech patterns. And since the book takes
us inside mark’s superhero community and shows us the people behind the
costumes and superpowers it’s important that we know who’s talking as soon as
they speak. And there was never a point where I had to go back and re-read a
paragraph because I was confused as to who was saying what to whom.

Sure, this
being a modern day superhero novel there is an abundance of profanity, sex and
drug use. But Mark isn’t using it to shock. And most certainly if you’ve been
reading comic books for the past fifteen years then I don’t think there’s
anything here that you already haven’t seen. And to be honest, he explores
certain aspects of superpower enhanced sex I’ve always wondered about (oh, come on…like you haven’t thought what
the sex life of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel or Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible
Woman must be like) Especially the relationship between Kid Rapscallion and
Duplication Girl which is…unique, to put it mildly.

Mark goes
ahead and takes the risk of telling his story in the present tense and he jumps
back and forth in time. I say risk because if you’re not willing to invest the
time and let the story unfold the way it has to in order to get to where it and
you has to go, then you’re going to get frustrated. And you shouldn’t. The
disconnected chronology is the prose equivalent of how most people tell a story
verbally. They jump around. They forget important points and have to go back to
fill in those points. They emphasize and polish up their own behavior while
misrepresenting the motives and behavior of others. Mark uses the technique
quite well to build suspense at key points of the narrative, especially when
the 9/11 terrorist attack happens and catches the superhero community totally by
surprise and everybody scrambles around trying to cover their own asses.

Should you
read USED TO BE: THE KID RAPSCALLION
STORY? If you’ve read Mark Bosuquet’s other works then I don’t have to give
you the hard sell. You know his talents as a writer and you know that he
delivers a solid piece of entertainment every time he steps up. If you’ve never
read anything by Mark before I’d actually recommend you try “The Haunting of
Kraken Moor” first but that’s because it’s my favorite thing he’s written so
far. And I think it’s a good way to ease you into Mark’s style and his approach
to storytelling. But hey, if you’re a superhero fan (and aren’t all of us
superhero fans by now?) then you certainly won’t be wasting your time or your
money with USED TO BE: THE KID
RAPSCALLION STORY.